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66 ORNAMENT 37.1.2013
the ornament bo okshelf
Anna Reynolds. 2013 In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart
Fashion. Royal Collection Trust: 299 pp., hardcover $75.00.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Anna Reynolds, Aileen Ribeiro,
and Georgina Ripley. 2013 Robe. Royal Collection Trust: 49 pp.,
paperback £3.95.
Many exhibitions of Tudor and Stuart portraiture have
included dazzling representations of dress, but In Fine Style is the
first to bring fashion to the forefront. Combining both iconic
and little-known portraits from the British Royal Collection with
rare examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dress from
museums around the world, the exhibition and its sumptuous
catalogue celebrate the intersection of art and fashion in one of
the most ornamental periods of history.
Reynolds has pulled off a curatorial magic act, tracking down
surviving garments with an uncanny resemblance to those
portrayed in portraits: linen ruffs, leather jerkins, embroidered
gowns, and fringed gloves (but, alas, no codpieces). Portrait
busts capture the sculptural nature of Tudor and Stuart clothing;
genre scenes fill in the missing back and side views. These
artworks are complemented by information found in
contemporary diaries, etiquette books, letters, bills, and
inventories, which are so detailed that they have helped
historians identify sitters in paintings.
For the English elite, "rich clothing was not seen as a sign of
weakness and ostentation but as a legitimate and admirable
proclamation of an individual's worth." In 1588, the Earl of
Leicester paid more for a doublet than Shakespeare paid for a
house; Mary II ordered forty-three pairs of shoes in the autumn
of 1694 alone. Artists often reserved their most expensive
pigments for painting costume. Jewels were not an optional
accessory but essential for men and women alike; they were often
sewn directly onto garments. Little jewelry from the period
survives, however, making portraiture a doubly valuable record.
Men's fashions "matched their female counterparts in
materials, expense and complexity of design and surface
decoration... Moreover, men were subject to similar manipulations
of the body to produce an ideal figure." Padding and corseting
created broad shoulders and small waists. William III is often
considered reserved, but that reputation crumbles in the face of a
surviving pair of his knitted silk stockings in vivid green.
Many fashion trends of the time can be traced to individual
members of the royal family; Catharine of Aragon, for example,
introduced blackwork embroidery to England from Spain.
Fashion magazines did not yet exist, but familial and diplomatic
connections between the courts of Europe meant that portraits
were exchanged, transmitting styles internationally at the highest
levels of society.
Though there are "surprisingly few accounts of the process of
sitting for a portrait and choosing the clothing," Reynolds
produces a fascinating chapter on artistic practices. Monarchs
sometimes had lackeys pose for portraits in their clothes to avoid
the tedium of multiple sittings. Reynolds makes judicious use of
artists' preparatory drawings, with their revealing annotations
and precise records of dress details. She notes that "many
[painters] who excelled in depictions of clothing and accessories
had family backgrounds that would have exposed them to fabrics
or jewellery from an early age." By the end of the period,
however, the precision of Nicholas Hilliard gave way to the
looser, impressionistic style of Anthony van Dyck, and "many
English portraits show their sitters self-consciously avoiding the
formality of court dress," preferring amorphous draperies.
Other chapters examine masque costume, children's dress,
and armor. There are detailed analyses of the most common
textiles and an extensive glossary. While Reynolds' approach will
be familiar to fans of Aileen Ribeiro's books, this period has not
been covered in depth before, and Reynolds was granted
unprecedented access to the royal treasures.
It is also worth seeking out Robe. Available at www.
royalcollection.org.uk, this instructive parody imagines what
Vogue might have looked like in the seventeenth century, with
headlines like "How to deal with smallpox scars" and "More ash
than cash: Your capsule wardrobe after the Great Fire."
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Floor Kaspers. 2011 Beads from Briare. The story of a bead
revolution from France. Blurb, Marblings Publishing: 74 pp.,
$21.09 softbound, $1.99 digital in iPad format.
While most in the bead community believe Venice and the
Czechs were the important producers of glass beads for the
colonial trade, Kaspers provides strong evidence that the
Bapterosses factory in Briare, France, was just as much a major
player, by adapting a modified Prosser technique. The original